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Press Release

CCS BARD ANNOUNCES 2007 SPRING EXHIBITION SERIES—CURATED BY MASTER’S DEGREE CANDIDATES AT BARD COLLEGE’S CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES
Exhibitions open on March 11, April 15, and May 13

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—This spring CCS Bard presents a series of twelve exhibitions at the CCS Galleries, curated by second-year students in its graduate program in curatorial studies. The exhibitions are the culmination of the students’ work for the master’s degree. The CCS Bard Galleries are open Wednesdays through Sundays, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., on the Bard College campus. All the exhibitions and related programs are free and open to the public. Transportation to and from New York City for the exhibition openings—March 11, April 15, and May 13—is available, without charge, via a chartered bus.
The first group of four exhibitions is on view from Sunday, March 11, through Sunday, March 25. Now You See It, curated by Ryan Doherty, features three artists, Susan Hiller, Zoe Beloff, and Jennifer Bornstein, who employ obsolete technologies to conjure up our desire for the supernatural. Affinities: Painting in Abstraction, curated by Kate Meehan McNamara, highlights recent works by eight painters who are expanding the practices of abstraction. We Love Cinema, curated by Özkan Cangüven, explores how artists from different parts of the world appropriate cinema to create new video work. Temporarily Disconnected, curated by Ruba Katrib, features video works by artists who enter into or fabricate situations brimming with social anxieties and cultural tensions. The opening reception takes place on Sunday, March 11, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The second group of three exhibitions is on view from Sunday, April 15, through Sunday, April 29. In Someone Else’s Skin, curated by Rebeca Noriega-Costas, examines how artists disclose the ways social and political violence manipulate and transform individuals in unexpected ways. Facts on the Ground, curated by Amy Owen, presents four projects by Bernard Khoury, Sarah Oppenheimer, Sean Snyder, and the Spatial Information Design Lab, that retool social, political, and historical information systems of the city. Stutter and Twitch, curated by Chen Tamir, uses video and photographic works that revel in the suspension of time. The opening reception takes place on Sunday, April 15, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The third and final group of five exhibitions is on view from Sunday, May 13, through Sunday, May 27. Curated by Emily Zimmerman, from rest to rest presents four artists who work with digital media to call attention to our mobile presence in space. Novel Readings, curated by Florencia Malbrán, includes works by Glenn Ligon, Jorge Macchi, and Ernesto Neto, which are presented in association with novels and literary criticism, to raise questions about cultural contexts. Repeat Performances: Roni Horn and Ragnar Kjartansson, curated by Markús Thór Andrésson, includes a series of portraits and an incessant performance, each questioning identity and difference. Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Intersubjectivity in Parallax, curated by Max Hernández Calvo, presents work by five artists who are close friends—José Miyashiro, Enrique La Cruz, Diego Lama, María Elena Alvarado, and Lara Alcántara—that expresses the obsessions of the artists’ own intersubjective relations. Come On Pilgrim: A 110-mile Exhibition, curated by Laura Mott, is a map and audio companion that leads visitors to six commissioned projects between New York City and CCS Bard.
The graduate program at CCS Bard is the preeminent program of its kind in the United States, dedicated to training curators and critics of contemporary art. The curriculum is specifically designed to deepen students’ understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating exhibitions of contemporary art, particularly in the complex social and cultural situations of present-day urban arts institutions. With state-of-the-art galleries, an extensive library and curatorial archive, and access to the remarkable Marieluise Hessel Collection of more than 1,700 works, CCS students have a unique opportunity to gain both intellectual grounding and actual experience within a museum.
Limited free seating is available on a chartered bus that leaves from SoHo in New York City for each exhibition opening. The bus returns to New York City after the opening. Reservations must be made in advance by calling CCS at 845-758-7598. Bus transportation is provided through the generosity of Audrey Irmas.
These exhibitions were made possible with support from the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund; Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation; patrons, supporters, and friends of the Center for Curatorial Studies; and by the Center’s annual benefit for student scholarships and exhibitions. Additional support for the spring exhibitions has been provided by the Monique Beudert Fund and the Mondriaan Foundation.
For further information, call the Center for Curatorial Studies at 845-758-7598, e-mail ccs@bard.edu, or visit www.bard.edu/ccs.
About the Center for Curatorial Studies
The Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present day. Founded in 1990 by Marieluise Hessel and Richard Black, the Center initiated its graduate program in curatorial studies in 1994. The curriculum is specifically designed to deepen students’ understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating exhibitions of contemporary art, particularly in the complex social and cultural situations of present-day urban arts institutions. With state-of-the-art galleries, an extensive library and curatorial archive, and access to the remarkable Marieluise Hessel collection of more than 1,700 works, students at CCS Bard gain both an intellectual grounding and actual experience within a museum. For further information, call the Center for Curatorial Studies at 845-758-7598, e-mail ccs@bard.edu, or visit www.bard.edu/ccs.
CCS Bard Spring Thesis Exhibitions—Series One
March 11–25, 2007
Opening reception Sunday, March 11, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
CCS Galleries, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Now You See It brings together artworks that engage the illusions of science and spirit. Susan Hiller’s Magic Lantern juxtaposes “white light” and “white noise” with slide projections of additive color experiments and spirit recordings of Electronic Voice Phenomena. Zoe Beloff uses stereoscopic film to reenact ten séances held by an early 20th-century French medium in The Ideoplastic Materializations of Eva C. Jennifer Bornstein’s What It Was and Celestial Spectacular use 16-millimeter film to document UFOs, eclipses, meteor showers and other extraordinary phenomena playfully constructed from everyday household objects. Together, these works employ old technologies to conjure our desire for the supernatural.
Curator: Ryan Doherty
Affinities: Painting in Abstraction, features recent work by artists including Carrie Moyer, Suzanne McClelland, Amy Sillman, Rebecca Morris, Dona Nelson, Laurel Sparks, Jutta Koether, and Jacqueline Humphries. The artists suggest a trajectory that redefines, empowers, and interrogates definitions of abstract painting. The exhibition inherently posits vital questions about the artists’ relationships, practices, processes, methodologies, history, and the painter’s connections with one another are all aspects of this inquiry
Curator: Kate Meehan McNamara
In We Love Cinema artists and filmmakers, including Javier Cambre, Jason Dee, Harun Farocki, Christoph Girardet, Gustavo Galuppo, Kara Hearn, Ömer Ali Kazma, Matthias Müller, Tejal Shah, and Krassimir Terziev, use various strategies to analyze and question cinema. Selected works offer new ways of looking at and understanding cinema, an institution that has become a fundamental part of our collective social memory during the last century. Artists in this exhibition invite spectators to take a closer look at films, challenging viewers by playing with their perceptions and memories of characters and movies that have become a familiar part of their lives.
Curator: Özkan Cangüven
In Temporarily Disconnected, artists—Ma’ayan Amir & Ruti Sela, Jannicke Låker, Erik van Lieshout, and Julika Rudelius—construct and enter into complex situations filled with social anxiety and cultural tension in their video works. By utilizing methods of antagonism and instigation, they examine the terrain of specific cultural, social and political situations, as well as power relations between the artists, their subjects, and viewers. The encounters portrayed distort perceptions between what is real and what is fictional, asking us to examine our beliefs and positions in the face of the prejudice, sexism, dominance, desire, impotence, humiliation, and cruelty depicted in the works. The artists and their subjects dare to say the uncomfortable, the problematic, and the offensive. In addition, on April 17, there is a conversation between artist Erik van Lieshout and Ian Buruma, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College and author of Murder in Amsterdam. Location and details to be announced. This program has been generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation.
Curator: Ruba Katrib
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(2.22.2007)